28 July 2026
The Map Before the Journey
- Janet Hugo
I have always been fascinated by maps and the perspective they offer. They don’t just tell you where you are but also show you what lies ahead.
This is similar to financial planning.
22 June 2026
Preaching is Easier than Practicing
- James Guimaraens
My eldest son, Sebastian, recently joined the ranks of the employed, having qualified in 2025. I was now faced with the reality of helping him make sense of the frankly overwhelming number of important decisions ahead of him: medical aid, life cover, retirement savings, financial management, and budgeting.
Insights
Background
At first glance, flying a light aircraft and wealth management seem to have very little in common. But I met with a client recently for his quarterly review and it was a meeting I really enjoyed. You see this client is passionate about flying his light aircraft and our conversation drifted, as it often does, beyond investments and markets.
We started talking about the topographical maps that pilots previously used to navigate across the country. Large paper maps spread across a cockpit that showed mountains, valleys, rivers, changing elevations and landmarks. Sadly, they are no longer published locally and most pilots now navigate almost entirely from electronic devices and GPS systems.
It took me back to my high school geography classes where I first learned to read topographical maps. Geography was one of my favourite subjects because in my mind, it explained how nature worked. How mountains folded over millions of years. How rivers carved valleys. How rainfall patterns changed because of elevation and landscape.
I was fascinated by the maps and the perspective they offered. They didn’t just tell you where you were but also showed you what lay ahead. They provided perspective and in most cases an explanation about what to expect in reality. Most importantly it gave a birds-eye view of the terrain ahead rather than simply reacting to what was directly in front of you.
And it struck me during our conversation how similar this is to financial planning.
Financial Planning
A good financial plan is really a topographical map for your life and wealth management.
It helps us rise above the immediate noise of markets, headlines and short-term emotions to see the broader landscape ahead. Without that perspective, we can easily become reactive. A market correction feels catastrophic. A strong market feels as though it will continue forever. Decisions become emotional and short term as one bounces from one news feed to the next.
But a proper financial plan changes that.
It provides structure, context and direction. More importantly it gives us the confidence to make decisions because we understand what conditions we might find along the way.
What The Research Shows
Interestingly, the research strongly supports the value of this kind of planning.
Large global investment research firms including Vanguard, Morningstar and Russell Investments have all studied the impact of professional financial advice and long-term planning on investor outcomes.
What they discovered was fascinating.
The greatest value of financial advice often has very little to do with finding the next winning investment or predicting markets correctly. Instead, much of the value comes from helping investors make better decisions consistently over time.
I’ve often said that an advisor’s biggest task is to help clients to remain disciplined during periods of fear and uncertainty. Maintaining appropriate diversification is another important function. And rebalancing portfolios rather than chasing past performance is another great contribution. Improving tax efficiency and cashflow withdrawal strategies also make a big difference. And perhaps most importantly, from helping people avoid emotionally driven decisions that can permanently damage long-term wealth creation.
Vanguard’s well-known “Advisor’s Alpha” research suggested that disciplined financial advice and structured planning may add approximately 3% per year in additional net value over time. Not through investment predictions but through behaviour, structuring for tax efficiency or cashflow requirements and generally better decision-making. While this is not a guaranteed 3%, nor is it evenly earned each year, it is a well-researched study that supports having a financial plan.
That additional return is particularly significant because it is incremental to market performance itself. If markets delivered 8% per year over the long term, improving outcomes takes us closer to 11% through disciplined planning and behaviour. I know this may not sound dramatic initially, but over decades, compounding changes everything.
R1 million invested at 8% for 20 years grows to approximately R4.6 million. At 11%, it grows to just over R8 million.
Almost double the capital.
Not necessarily because somebody found an outperforming investment strategy, but because better decisions were made repeatedly.
Good Decision Making
This brings me to what is perhaps the most important lesson of all.
The greatest danger to long-term wealth is often not market volatility itself, but poor decisions during volatile periods.
We need to admit that as human beings we are emotional. We become fearful when markets fall and optimistic when markets rise. Unfortunately, successful investing often requires behaviour that feels uncomfortable in the moment.
A financial plan acts as an anchor during these periods. It reminds investors why their strategy was designed the way it was. It helps distinguish temporary turbulence from genuine long-term risk.
Much like those old paper maps did not remove the mountains, storms or headwinds, a financial plan does not eliminate volatility from an investment strategy. It does provide perspective, orientation and confidence in the journey ahead. Remember pilots don’t study the flight path in the middle of the journey, they study it before take-off. They identify mountains, alternative airfields, fuel stops and generally have their contingency plans in place before leaving the ground. The flight path is then a reference tool, much like a financial plan.
And in a world increasingly dominated by small screens, constant notifications and short-term thinking, perhaps one of the greatest advantages any investor can still have is the ability to step back and see the bigger picture. The direction you take, and stick to, makes all the difference.
